Friday, July 29, 2016

At first glance, Kentucky ObamaCare insurer CareSource's approved rate increase looks odd. Better known as a Medicaid managed care coverage provider but also selling on the exchange, CareSource requested a large 20.55% rate increase request for individual ObamaCare customers but their rate is going up a staggering 29.3%.

Bevin spokesman Doug Hogan explained that an administration actuarial review showed CareSource's rate request "would be insufficient" to pay claims and "would ultimately lead to a harmful scenario for consumers."

Former Governor Steve Beshear could have saved customers, medical providers and taxpayers money and a lot of trouble if he had taken such care at any point before Kentucky Health Cooperative's managers took the money from their bloated salaries and bonuses and ran, leaving the rest of us holding the bag when their shell game failed.

"I guess there aren't any decent Obamacrat actuaries out there or maybe Gov. Beshear was more interested in seeing his friends at the cooperative load up on market share they couldn't maintain so they all got paid bonuses before the music stopped," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "Gov. Bevin deserves credit for stopping CareSource from playing the same game.

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

ObamaCare cheerleaders in the media keep talking about Gov. Matt Bevin's attempt to renegotiate Kentucky's abysmal Medicaid expansion deal into a somewhat less abysmal deal, but they continue to leave out the most important point. Gov. Bevin's claim that he might unilaterally withdraw from Medicaid expansion is not supported by federal or state law or relevant case law, but federal officials don't want to make that clear because they are still trying to suck other states in by letting them believe there is an escape hatch.

There isn't.

Medicaid is a federal/state partnership for government-run healthcare in which the federal government pays most of the bills and retains total control of how the program is run. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that ObamaCare was simply a tax instead of an unconstitutional usurpation of individual and state rights by the federal government according to the plain language of the Tenth Amendment, it slightly trimmed back the usurpation by deeming the Medicaid expansion to be each state's choice rather than a requirement as previously stated in the "Affordable Care Act."

Some states blindly jumped in to the Medicaid expansion without asking any questions. Gov. Steve Beshear abused state law to add Kentucky to that number. Others negotiated slightly less horrible deals and accepted expansion, claiming falsely to have an ability to withdraw from the expansion later if it proved too expensive.

Obama and Hillary Clinton want to keep pushing holdout states to take the Medicaid expansion by keeping alive the falsehood that states have an ability to escape it later on if they choose. Kentucky would be the first to test this if Gov. Bevin's reform proposal is rejected and he then follows through on his threat to then reverse Kentucky's entrance into expansion. The feds' interest in suckering the holdout states may well inspire them to accept at least most of Bevin's requested reforms.

If, instead, they decide to fight, Bevin could drop excess Medicaid recipients and wait for the feds to sue. Presumably, a President Trump would not fight us and President Clinton would. (Good question to ask both of them.) President Clinton would win the lawsuit, but if Trump is POTUS and there is no lawsuit, Kentucky will win big by joining the states opting out of ObamaCare.

Saturday, July 23, 2016

State Representative Kevin Bratcher has filed a bill which would tell the federal government where to stick unconstitutional mandates against state governments which exceed federal authority. The bill, filed as a joint resolution, could be an effective election issue for Republicans seeking a majority in the state House of Representatives.

"Bratcher's resolution states clearly the General Assembly's demand to the federal government to take its proper place as a limited agent of the states with specific, limited powers spelled out in the Constitution," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "Hillary Clinton Democrats in Frankfort will hate this and they should be asked that on the record as often as possible between now and November."

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Watching a craven Andy Beshear recklessly and repeatedly attack Gov. Matt Bevin with state tax dollars from the Attorney General's office for no better reasons than that his father shook down the Democrat donor class to buy him the office and because he can is getting pretty old. He needs to be impeached.

The one sticking point is Republicans must take a majority in this November's elections and then have the courage to follow through on the impeachment process.

The Kentucky Constitution Sections 66 to 68 governs how the process would work and it is not much different than the federal process, which you may remember being applied to Hillary Clinton's husband when he violated Paula Jones' civil rights.

One likely question in the process is the Constitution specifies that impeachment can result from "any misdemeanors in office." While Beshear may well be guilty of any number of crimes, what's interesting is that case law is overwhelming in affirming the Senate's ability to define terms and make its own rules for an impeachment process. In any event, neither prior nor subsequent court conviction for any crime is necessary for a constitutional officer to be impeached by the House and convicted and removed from office by the Senate. If the legislature wants him removed, they can do it.

Clearing this bad actor out of the Attorney General's office to be replaced with a more serious public servant is a very worthwhile pursuit worth campaigning for this fall.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Governor Matt Bevin's formal request to federal authorities to rein in Kentucky's failed Medicaid expansion contains a one line critique of the lawless Beshear Administration that will make Frankfort ObamaCare cheerleaders in the media mad when they read it.

"The reality is that Medicaid expansion does not pay for itself as envisioned by the prior administration," Bevin's Section 1115 Demonstration Waiver Application says, "and the Commonwealth of Kentucky cannot afford the cost of the Medicaid expansion program without this demonstration waiver."

Bevin Administration officials will present their requested changes Wednesday in Frankfort to the Interim Joint Committee on Health and Welfare at 10am in room 129 of the Capitol Annex.

"Beshear abused Kentucky law KRS 205.520(3) to justify jumping into ObamaCare Medicaid, but the statute's admonition to take advantage of all available federal health funds would better have been followed by avoiding the expansion altogether because it was such an obvious trap to sink the state deeper into debt," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "We're trapped now and Gov. Bevin's attempt here is our best option, ObamaCare cheerleaders be damned."

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Fayette County Schools has received a $600,000 charitable grant to start a doomed program which deserves immediate awareness so its inevitable failure may not be a total waste.

With overheated fanfare, Fayette Superintendent Manny Caulk announced the start of another attempt to reduce racial education achievement gaps, telling the Lexington Herald Leader "today we stand before our community to say we will no longer allow a child's demography to determine his destiny."

Caulk emphasized starting a volunteer reading program for elementary students, tutoring and leadership training in middle schools and drop-out prevention and college/career readiness in high schools. No one should be surprised to see the $600,000 won't last long funding these not-so-revolutionary ideas.

Twenty four years ago, when I was starting my career in Atlanta, I was also volunteering with ninth grade students in two area high schools. One day, I asked each group separately how many of them expected to one day play professional sports. In the poor, black, inner city group, about half the boys raised their hands. In the middle class, suburban, all-white-except-one-kid group, every hand pointed at one black kid sitting quietly in his desk. His hand was not raised, but a few years later he played some minor league baseball before starting a ten year career in the NFL. He was not a star and you wouldn't likely recognize his name, but he made it. None of the others did.

I appreciate any emphasis on lifting up young people, particularly any from disadvantaged circumstances, but participants in this "Boys of Color" scheme will become pawns in a political game to roll a $600,000 one time grant into a permanent spending spree for services of which most should have already been provided.

Mr. Caulk calls the $600,000 grant a "game changer," but he needs to demonstrate quickly that he isn't just playing the same old game. That won't happen. Education is a real pathway to success, but waiting around for government to give it to you is a sucker's game. If you want to help a young black child to succeed, teach him this:

Humana has withdrawn its request to raise ObamaCare premiums 33.7% next year and Gov. Matt Bevin should use the move as a reason to start pushing for repeal of Kentucky's certificate of need laws.

The withdrawal is related to Humana's pending merger with Aetna, whose 5.6% individual market rate hike for 2017 has already been approved. That's bad news for Aetna's ObamaCare members because those former Humana members whose health costs necessitated a $33.7% increase now want to join up with them or one of the other companies with a relatively healthier insured base.

And that means higher costs for everyone.

Underlying dramatically increasing health insurance premiums, of course, are similarly rising healthcare costs and they have been made worse by Kentucky's burdensome regulatory impact on the industry, specifically its certificate of need statutes, or CON. CON keeps prices artificially high by limiting competition between healthcare providers. Gov. Bevin should take to his bully pulpit to encourage legislators to get government out of the way on this key issue. Resistant legislative incumbents deserve to be replaced.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Former Gov. Steve Beshear and Frankfort House Democrats made a huge mess of the rule of law attempting repeatedly the last few years to cram ObamaCare down our throats. Gov. Matt Bevin just quietly took a big step to clear up what could have been real chaos on that front as part of keeping his campaign promise to shut down Kentucky's state-run ObamaCare exchange.

Beshear's cartoonish repeated attempts to create "Kynect" with illegal and illegally reissued executive orders which were never ratified by the legislature and House Democrats' repeated attempts to ratify them anyway left Gov. Bevin entering July unable to shut down the illegal exchange immediately while negotiating with Obama officials to shut it down soon and no legal construct for keeping it going another day. So Bevin issued a carefully worded executive order creating "Kynect" long enough to shut it down with as little disruption as possible.

"Gov. Bevin deserves a ton of credit for walking behind Frankfort Democrats with a big pooper scooper to clean up this ObamaCare stuff," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "It's telling that after hyperventilating over every lie, bogus statistic and illegal Beshear ObamaCare move for years now, Kentucky's media is almost completely ignoring this responsible move by Bevin."

Friday, July 08, 2016

As Kentucky moves closer to legalizing marijuana for medical use, tax policy deserves special consideration in treatment of the plant and Kentucky can lead the way nationally by leaving all elements of production and distribution untaxed. At issue is the fact that federal designation of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug allows the Internal Revenue Service to prohibit the use of any deductions of business expenses for products deemed illegal by federal law.

This policy has the effect of heavily increasing federal taxation on marijuana even in medical marijuana states, which costs are then passed along to patients.

"Kentuckians increasingly see past anti-marijuana scare tactics and Gov. Bevin's campaign pledge to support medical use of the plant provides solid proof of that," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "Excessive federal taxation, at least while it lasts, should be met with a completely tax-free status of marijuana in the Commonwealth to help both our providers and consumers."

Tuesday, July 05, 2016

Former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear continues fumbling around the state in support of the ObamaCare debacle, but soon to be released statistics will show even constituents drawing federal subsidies to purchase jacked-up health policies in the last year dropped them here about as quickly as in any other state.

"Premiums are skyrocketing, doctors are quitting and people are suffering while politicians and their media-based pets who crammed this garbage down our throats illegally pretend everything will be fine if we throw a few more billion dollars at the problem," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "Gov. Bevin should stop collecting the illegally transferred Kentucky Access tax and shut down Kynect right away."